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House of Danu Lughnasadh Festival weekend (July 30 to August 2), Santa Cruz mountains north of Watsonville. 2nd Annual Gorsedd. All Bards, Ovates, Druids and Neopagans welcome!

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from Storycatcher (click)

pages 18-19

written by Christina Baldwin

of Peerspirit, Washington,

reprinted here with author's permission

I have read a story of a tribe in southern Africa called the Babemba in which a person doing something wrong, something that destroys the delicate social net, brings all work in the village to a halt. The people gather around the "offender," and one by one they begin to recite every thing he has done right in his life: every good deed, thoughtful behavior, act of social responsibility. These things have to be true about the person, and spoken honestly, but the time-honored consequence of misbehavior is to appreciate that person back into their better part of himself. The person is given the chance to remember who he is and why his important to the life of the village.

I want to live under such a practice of compassion. When I forget my place, when I lash out with some private wounding in a public way, I want to be remembered back into alignment with my self and purpose. I want to live with the opportunity for reconciliation. When someone around me thoughtless or cruel, I want to be given the chance to respond with a ritual that created the possibility of reconnection. I want to live in a neighborhood where people don't shoot first, don't sue first, where people are Storycatchers willing to discover in strangers the mirror of themselves. I want to be surrounded by a story-based culture that itself remembers story is essential to human survival.

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